Author: Toby Shapshak

In the end, it was Airbnb that finished the year with some good cheer for the tech industry. Although it was an economically crushing year for most of the world, as people were forced to shelter-in-place for a global pandemic, it was a booming year for tech, telecoms and social media firms. Airbnb, so long a startup darling, proved it could step up when its shares more than doubled on their first day of trading, giving it a US$100bn valuation. Forced to work from home, tech services – and their stocks – soared. Unheard of in February, Zoom became –…

I can’t help it. I’m a news junkie. I read all the news. All the time. And I’ve found a new way to get my fix. I noticed it at first on the Daily Maverick, a right-facing solid arrow symbol, the universal icon for the “play” button. So, I played it. A nice voice read me the article. It was great. Then I spotted it on businesslive.co.za, and then in the newly updated News24 app. If I don’t see the text-to-speech functionality, I then “select all” for that article and get Siri to read it to me (by right clicking…

With his squeaky voice Charles Martinet is instantly recognisable as that lovable Italian plumber Mario. But he looks nothing like the character he’s been voicing since 1990 in the eternally popular eponymous video game, Mario. With a thick head of white hair Martinet has an impish smile that seems to come through in his voice when he chimes that famous line: “It’s-a me, Mario!”. Affable and still seemingly somewhat bemused at his unexpected fame, Martinet was in South Africa a few years ago for a previous Nintendo launch. Since 1990 he has been voicing the “Italian plumber from Brooklyn” as…

As a mental health excursion on a Saturday morning during lockdown, my wife and I would get a cappuccino and a croissant, and take our three-year-old son for a walk. We have old people in our families – my mother is 92 – and our priority has been to make sure we don’t inadvertedly give it to them. This was the middle of August. There was none of the strange certainty that would emerge by October, and now November, about this “novel coronavirus pandemic”. As us South Africans emerged from the harshness of level five lockdown, we tentatively ventured out,…

It’s fantastic news for small businesses that some of the country’s largest firms have committed to paying SMEs on 30 days. It’s really great. As any small business owner will tell you, managing cashflow is your biggest headache, caused usually by a bigger company with lumbering, painfully slow internal processes and scant regard for the impact on suppliers. Called the #PayIn30 campaign, it was launched by Business for South Africa (B4SA), the South African SME Fund and Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA); and also involves Business Unity South Africa (Busa), the Small Business Institute (SBI) and the Black Business Council (BBC).…

Like all big businesses with a loyalty scheme, Pick n Pay is the latest to try its hand at expanding its program. Announced this week the retailer is launching a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), called PnP Mobile. It differs from a mobile network operator (MNO) like Vodacom or MTN because it is a virtual operation that piggy backs on the MNO’s network. It’s not only notable that the second largest retailer in the country is expanding its Smart Shopper program but that it’s partnered with MTN. Previous MVNOs – including the original Virgin Mobile (now in business rescue), FNB…

The ANC still thinks it lives in a pre-internet age. When Ace Magashule stood outside the Bloemfontein court last Friday spewing his political conspiracy theories and refusing to step down as secretary general of the ruling party, he thought he was talking to his supporters. But the whole world was listening, including any potential investors wondering if the unprecedented charging of such a senior official meant a sea of change in wanton state capture bequeathed to us by the lost decade under Jacob Zuma. Like #PresidunceZuma before him, who used a similar scotched earth political strategy, Magashule isn’t just trying…

This may be the crucial moment in history when the age of the desktop computer is truly replaced by the age of mobile. On Tuesday night, without much surprise, Apple announced its new laptop line-up proudly running on its own Apple Silicon processors. The new range of M1 chips are faster, more powerful, use less electricity, and everything else promised in an Apple launch event, where hyperbole is as essential as tech specs. Notably, the M1 processors are based on the mobile chips that power the iPhone and iPad ranges. For a long time, it’s been unfolding before our eyes…

It turns out there is a way to get Donald Trump off Twitter. All that has to happen is him losing the US presidency. Now we know. It’s heartening to know that Facebook and Twitter, two of the greatest titans of this current tech empire, have found their spines at last. The Washington Post calculated that Trump had told 25,000 lies in the last few years. Most of those, until now, have never been factchecked by social networks too afraid of #PresidunceTrump – as one hashtag has already labelled the Tweeter-in-chief no longer. Finally, instead of the rampant lies and…

I didn’t really believe that Checkers would actually take sixty minutes to deliver the groceries I had just ordered, but I was happy to get them on the same day. I’d heard people raving about the new Sixty60 app even before that economic elephant called the Covid-19 lockdown that trampled on us. But the reason I had downloaded it was because I’d seen the advert in the Daily Maverick newspaper. Not only was I pleased to see the launch of a new newspaper (a good democracy needs all the voices it can get), but a decent share of advertising, including…